BLACK STATIC #41

by Andy Cox

  In case you haven’t guessed from my plot synopsis, this is an utterly bonkers story, with Cushing feeding on the delirium of her two lead characters, piling one unlikelihood on top of another as their complementary manias run completely out of control. The matter of fact style of the telling only makes it seem all the stranger, with various adjunct sections, such as a policeman phoning Greg’s mother, that add to the verisimilitude of the whole. Eventually and possibly post-mortem, we have Greg observing the beginning of a new cult, one that celebrates his godhood, and addressing the reader directly, telling us what he has done to the world and instructing us to worship him, at which point the fourth wall gets completely broken down, and for the reader the real question is, to paraphrase the great Hawkwind in one of their finest moments, “Has the world gone mad or is it Greg?” Either way, this is a marvellous piece of gonzo storytelling, like Dunsany on drugs.

  Gonzo storytelling is a classification that could be applied with as much if not more justification to Eric Shapiro’s LOVE AND ZOMBIES (DarkFuse eBook, 75pp, $2.99). In the wake of an event known as Bright Thursday the world suffered a zombie outbreak which was contained by the military, but there is always the threat of a recurrence. Henry gets hit up by his oldest friend Sam Kranson to drive to Las Vegas and the desert beyond, there to find a female zombie to deliver to the Christopher family to take part in a business venture they plan. He’s not really happy with the arrangement, but accepts anyway as it will enable him to earn a lot of money, enough to wed girlfriend Teresa. Henry and Teresa have an unusual relationship, in that he can only have sex with her when they bring a stripper into the equation. Naturally when they get out in the desert things go seriously awry, not least because Sam is an arsehole of the first rank, and poor Henry has to tackle zombies, mobsters, the police and a disgruntled girlfriend.

  Yep, this is most definitely gonzo storytelling, with a plot that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, some over the top characters, plenty of gun toting/zombie shooting action, and a wealth of unlikely coincidences, such as Henry just happening to know the inventor of the zombie cure (they work at the same pizza place). It’s written in a slightly breathless style, with Henry addressing the reader directly and at times resorting to such things as compiling lists of events that happened in the past, or undermining the plot by telling people what he should do and then acting in exactly the opposite way. And then there is the whole thing with strippers, which seems to have been added simply for gratuitous thrills, and does nothing whatever to forward the action, but does mean some more interesting characters can be introduced into this helter skelter of a storyline. It all sounds like a mess and really shouldn’t work, but it does and entertainingly well. You just have to hold your breath when things go way over the top and release at the moments when they calm down again. I loved it, craziness and all.

  When Henry and Sam were out in the desert I hope they kept an eye out for Emily, the protagonist of CEREMONY OF FLIES (DarkFuse eBook, 96pp, $2.99) by Kate Jonez. Emily accidentally kills a man in Las Vegas and goes on the run with a stranger in a car, only once you’ve killed one man it comes easy and before you can say abracadabra Emily (who sometimes goes by the name Kitty) is shooting anyone who looks at her wrong. Next up is the boy who keeps appearing and who they decide to adopt and call Harvey for no particular reason. At an isolated Spanish Mission in the desert they encounter nuns and a priest who has his own ideas about taking care of the boy, which has Emily waving her weapon again. And then there’s the Mayan apocalypse and a motorcycle gang of four, riders who may have traded in horses for horsepower. Intercut with all of this are infodump slices giving us the back story on the places the characters visit, the car they drive, the Mayan calendar etc.

  I’ve mixed feelings about all this. The writing zings, grabbing you in the opening sections when Emily tells it like it is, but the longer the story goes on the less novel it seems. The overall effect is one of surrealism cranked up to the max, like a peyote dream of the end of days made into a David Lynch film. The characters didn’t grab me though, seeming to lack any real depth, just be shadows acting out the author’s script and with little sense of who they really are (e.g. Emily’s transformation from remorseful killer to ruthless gun girl didn’t quite ring true), their actions simply poses they adopt for the duration, with the fluidity of nomenclature hinting at this superficiality. I liked the infodumps; they didn’t really add anything to the story, but were an engaging attempt to do things differently, and made me think of Tom Robbins’ work. Doing things differently is what this book is all about, or that’s how it feels to me. Overall I don’t know if I enjoyed it or not, though I’m leaning towards not, but it certainly was a trip I’ll remember.

  WHEN WE FALL (DarkFuse eBook, 84pp, $3.49) is my first encounter with the work of Peter Giglio, but hopefully won’t be the last. Thirteen year old Ben Brendel is going through hard times, following the death of his best friend Johnny and worst enemy Ryan. He finds consolation in the company of Aubrey, the seventeen year old daughter of family friend Roy Rose, who shares his love of making 8mm movies, and even though he knows it’s unwise Ben starts to have feelings for her that aren’t strictly to do with friendship. But Aubrey is having problems of her own, after the failure of her relationship with jock Craig, and Ben begins to see the ghosts of both Johnny and Ryan, one insulting him and the other asking for help. It all ties together in ways he can’t know and when his world falls apart Ben has to find a way to do the right thing, for the sake of both the living and the dead.

  This is a powerful coming of age story set against the backdrop of small town America in the 1980s, a milieu that author Giglio brings to vivid life, with the characters arguing about Reagan, troubled by the spectre of Nam and indulging in Star Wars nostalgia. The heart of the novella has to do with Ben’s journey of self-discovery, his having to come to terms with Johnny’s death and forgiving himself for surviving, while at the same time learning to let go of the bad things in his past. His situation is mirrored in that of Aubrey, who is dealing with similar feelings of guilt and remorse, though for entirely different reasons, and the tragedy of the book is that she can’t follow the advice she gives to Ben.

  The two characters are opposite sides of the same coin, with Giglio getting under their skin to reveal the terrible things they have to cope with. This is Bradbury’s Green Town, Illinois, moved on thirty years and seen through a glass darkly, and although there are supernatural grace notes, as with Ryan’s ghost, the real thrust of the narrative has to do with human fallibility. It is a pitch perfect rendition of teenage angst, the trials and tribulations of young love and learning to accept what you cannot change. There is wisdom in Giglio’s words, and for a Ben a lesson that is hard won.

  While he doesn’t seem as preoccupied with sexual matters and the use of horny teenagers as protagonists, the writer Tim Curran most reminds me of is Richard Laymon. His philosophy seems to be why sod about with spectral effects and the like when you can go straight for the jugular with a bloody big butcher knife.

  Case in point SOW (DarkFuse eBook, 92pp, $2.99) in which Richard is afraid that his pregnant wife Holly has been possessed, after they visited an abandoned farm with its dilapidated piggery. To everyone else she appears normal, the Hallmark picture of an expectant mother glowing with health, but to Richard she has been replaced by a vile, foul mouthed hag, and the only person she will allow to attend her is Mrs Crouch, a midwife who Richard fears is the reincarnation of a four hundred year dead witch. All his attempts to expose the truth come undone, until finally Richard can only return to the piggery for a final confrontation with a monstrous sow, an archetypal creature that has a plan for us all.

  With echoes in the plot of The Omen and The Exorcist, plus Ligotti’s Great Black Swine, in other hands this might have played out as a clever psychological drama, but Curran is his own man, and from the very first we know that Richard is not hallucinating, that this terrible possession is a matter of reality, something against wh
ich he must fight, however futile it seems. And so instead of psychology we get pure schlock horror, with one repellent vision after another on the page as Richard grows increasingly desperate, culminating in an image of bleakness and defeat that is truly unsettling. The book is a tour de force of grotesque invention, piling one gruesome vision on top of another, taking the cherished ideal of motherhood and twisting it into something abhorrent, and while Curran provides a coherent and compelling storyline, you suspect that his plot is just a pretext for this gleeful atrocity show and tell. Sow won’t be for everyone, and you should avoid it like the plague if your sensibilities lie only in the Jamesian end of the horror spectrum. Me, I like a bit of gore on occasion, to wallow in excess when it’s done well and not simply gratuitous, and this is a splendid example of the type. Splatterpunks, eat your hearts out.

  BLOOD SPECTRUM

  TONY LEE ON DVDS/BLU-RAYS

  THE LAST HORROR MOVIE

  CELLAR DWELLER

  DEMON LEGACY

  PIT AND THE PENDULUM

  I, FRANKENSTEIN

  RE-ANIMATOR

  THE PIT

  TRUE DETECTIVE

  TRUE BLOOD

  13 SINS

  RAPTURE

  HAUNTER

  THE FORGOTTEN

  THE ATTIC

  DELIVERY

  DEVIL’S DUE

  Julian Richards attempts to deliver a chilling study of absolute evil on the loose in THE LAST HORROR MOVIE (re-released on DVD, 5 May). Made in 2003, this stars urbane Kevin Howarth (from Razor Blade Smile, 1998) as mad Max, a wannabe documentarist of supposedly real-life murders. Max interrupts the beginning of a standard American slasher picture and, with apologies, quickly launches into a denunciation of you (the viewer) just for agreeing to watch the grisly violence that he, so formally, introduces. The misdeeds of the one do not outweigh the needs of the many.

  Inevitably, there were comparisons with Belgian black comedy Man Bites Dog and John McNaughton’s cult classic Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer but, seriously, Richards’ effort is simply not in their league. Max asks pointed/loaded questions about distasteful voyeurism, and contemplates the appeal of covertly observing others’ pain/distress. And yet, in spite of a handful of emotionally manipulative scenes – in which helpless captives are ‘slaughtered’ while Max repeatedly queries viewers’ sensibilities with his “why are you watching this?” schtick – Richards’ attempted treatise on modern horror movies in general and torture porn in particular very soon becomes tiresome. He is too busy joining up the dots to see the connecting lines of influence (from sociopathic studies?), never mind the proverbial big picture.

  The premise was a promising one but ultimately The Last Horror Movie never manages to be as disturbing as it ought to be. Woefully bad amateurs take some of the supporting roles, and that certainly does not help with the degree of realism being strived for here. We learn along the way that Max’s regular job is shooting wedding videos, so my favourite alternative title for this picture would surely be ‘Four Weddings and Lots of Funerals’.

  As a genre mockumentary this submits no answers to its battery of questions, and reaches no apparently useful conclusions. Yes, it is a clever wheeze (perhaps you will cheer when the traffic warden is dispatched with a claw hammer?), and it’s fine enough as a thesis idea for a student’s 20-minute short, but The Last Horror Movie fails to hold viewers’ attention at feature-length. Instead of any kind of a meaningful statements about the grim amorality of horror videos, illegalities of cod-mythical snuff movies, and the public’s seeming fascination with designer violence and cinematic massacres, too much of this feebleminded drama is pretentious twaddle. John Herzfeld’s 15 Minutes (2001) already said all of this, and it served up a watchable cops ‘n’ killers thriller at the same time. Overall, I would have to admit that even Ryan Lee Driscoll’s tawdry crime fix Making A Killing was decidedly more intriguing throughout than Richards’ alleged shocker is. Despite the director’s view that he is engaging in something original and extraordinary for British cinema, there is actually nothing ‘new’ here. We really have seen it all before and many times since too, complete with knotted loose ends. The Last Horror Movie is not a Hindenberg-scale folly, it’s only an ill-fated big mistake like one-too-many drinks on a stag night.

  From Kubrick’s The Shining and Disney’s Condorman to Romancing the Stone and Tibor Takacs’ cult I, Madman (aka Hardcover), the 1980s were an especially intriguing period for movies about writers and artists, where blurring the distinctions between creator and character, page and screen, confrontation and escapism, explored new levels of complexity in terms of their fantasy content, often to surrealistic effect. We can trace some of the mutant trope’s literary DNA back to mimetic TV icons like Jason King and his ilk, which propagate today in shows such as Castle, but the ‘write stuff’ theme and its artistic leanings has a rich history across genre media.

  The prologue of CELLAR DWELLER (DVD, 12 May) has Jeffrey Combs playing a doomed comicbook artist who is seen to create the monster that slays him. Thirty years later, fan artist Whitney (Debrah Farentino, in her first starring role) attempts to revive his disreputable old comic when she enrols at an institute for the arts. Supernaturally, her drawings conjure up the very same ravenous beastie, causing multiple deaths among the students. John Carl Buechler produced some memorable make-up effects and creatures but, even by the often maligned decade’s standards, his work as a director of gothic fantasy remains quite mediocre. Buechler’s approach is too clumsily comedic to facilitate much genuine horror and far too predictable to be very funny, except for some obviously gory slapstick. Perhaps the main point of interest in Cellar Dweller is its inadvertent but effective demonstration of how imaginative storyboard artwork can be so vital to what appears on-screen. Of the main cast only Farentino (née Mullowney) holds our attention, as heroine Whitney becomes increasingly fraught with guilt and shame at her inexplicable culpability in the carnage of serial murders. Can she simply draw her way towards redemption, and safety for all? There’s a double-twist ending but its details are foreseeable, partly because Buechler’s directing is so thuddingly inept when it comes to any moral subtlety.

  DEMON LEGACY (DVD, 19 May) has all the guileless impact of a hopelessly contrived package of formula clichés and subgenre referencing, as director Rand Vossler presents a blatantly novice (“Let me show you what happens to a sorority slut who dabbles in witchcraft”) effort likely to please only the executive gods of supernatural churned-out rental/retail products.

  Five girls get together at a lodge in the woods, hoping to dispel pity-party blues. Gothic possession antics are triggered by a Ouija board game. Cartoonish malevolence is faced by heroine Michelle (AnnaMaria Demara), in bouts of scaredy-cats versus snarly-bitches, for silly comedy to brighten the sketchy plot (just add one heroic ex-boyfriend) dullness, with a family mystery anchoring extended chase sequences. John Savage plays the red-herring lurker who rescues this offering from a stilted mishmash of zombie infectioneering and charmless Evil Dead tribute, as he capably guest stars to expose what’s what and who’s who, rising to the challenges of a demon slaying finale with a sackful of rolling heads.

  I won’t pretend this clunker is worthy of recommendation but, if you are in a forgiving mood and have plenty of booze to hand, it’s a watchable slice of paganist nonsense boasting unintentional character jokes, haywire story developments, and a few surprisingly effective jumpy moments. This should entertain, for an hour or more, in the esteemed B-movie tradition.

  “She could play the harpsichord like no other woman,” remarks widower Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price), but his crushing bereavement is only a state of mind in Edgar Allan Poe’s PIT AND THE PENDULUM (Blu-ray, 19 May). Dwelling so much upon creepy obsession, and living in the morbid past, Roger Corman’s picturesque sense of oppressive atmosphere, here centred on a Spanish cliff-top castle, follows his Poe-cycle launcher The Fall of the House of Usher (Black Static #36), and screenwriter Richard Matheson leav
es viewers with little doubt that Poe’s worldview lacks any future that his typically haunted characters might look forward to.

  Under the dreadful weight of barbaric history, it is appropriate that inquisitional terrors of mechanical/spiritual nature are revealed in tinted flashbacks. Not satisfied with Don Medina’s reluctant explanations about his beloved Elizabeth (Barbara Steele) being simply ‘frightened to death’, the ‘dead’ wife’s brother investigates, discovering much overly theatrical melodrama leading to the genre custom of exhumation. Vengeance duly arrives with a sympathetic thunderstorm and the parting shot delivers a hysterical but silent scream of despair. While the twisty plot offers a very specific ending, the nightmarish comeuppance it conjures goes on and on – but not as lingering continuance of gloomy life, just the anguish of being stuck in a death trap. Oh, yes…those dark eyes still have it.

  The hi-def transfer of this 1961 production is excellent, and the disc comes with a couple of commentary tracks to reward further viewings.